Month: February 2014

Reminder! The SUMASA Board Elections for the 2014-2015 academic year are happening soon!

The SUMA student community is an important and unique aspect of the SUMA experience. The Student Association plays an integral role in the development of this community. If you are interested in taking an active role in student life, please consider running for a position on the Executive Board.

Available positions:

• President

• VP of Academic Affairs

• VP of Communications (2)

• VP of Events

• VP of Community Outreach

• VP of Finance

To submit your candidacy, please email sumasaboard with the position of interest in the subject line. Include your name, position of interest, photo, and a brief campaign statement (250 words), to be distributed to the student body.

The Brown Institute for Media Innovation seeks to sponsor thinking, building and speculating on how stories are discovered and told in a networked, digitized world. This Monday, they’ll be hosting their Magic Grant and Fellowship Application Mixer. There Journalism and Engineering students and faculty from Columbia and Stanford University will meet to discuss the ideas generated by 2014/15 grant and fellowship awardees. For more information and links to grant and fellowship awardee ideas, see the link below.

MIT’s Climate CoLab is seeking knowledgeable, passionate and committed volunteers who are eager to help crowdsource new, creative solutions to issues related to climate change.

The Climate CoLab is an online platform where people from around the world collaborate on developing and evaluating proposals for what to do about global climate change. Activity in the Climate CoLab is organized through contests, and anyone in the world can participate. This year, the Climate CoLab is running 15-20 contests on a range of topics, from building efficiency to urban adaptation to shifting public attitudes and behaviors.

Hello Friends!We need your help! We are a five-woman team of graduate students from Columbia University and we’re competing in the regional round of the Hult Prize, a start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship, to be held on March 7-8, 2014 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. While there we plan to test out our social enterprise concept, which we’ve been working on for the past few months.The Hult Prize is co-sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and this year’s President’s Challenge, selected by former President Clinton, is to address “Non-communicable Disease in the Urban Slum.”Our team “Health For All” is concentrating our program idea on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and prevention. We recognize there is a huge potential to improve the lives of generations to come in slum communities across the world. Our idea brings communities together to enjoy the health benefits of dance while learning strategies for healthy living and tracking their impact. The goal is to reach 25 million slum dwellers by 2019.

We are currently conducting small-scale pilots of the program in New York City and in New Jersey. We are fundraising to conduct a larger pilot of our program in a favela (slum community) in Brazil during the first week of March 2014. Why Brazil? Because that is where we are competing on March 7-8 for a space in the final competition and the area offers a truer representation of the majority of the world’s urban slums that cannot be learned in NYC or New Jersey.

If we win the final competition, we win $1 million in seed money to launch our social enterprise and positively impact the heart health of some 25 million people living in urban slums around the globe!

Based on these multiple pilot tests, and after we make the program more robust and scalable, we plan to officially launch the program in India. Why India? Because that is where the incidence of CVD is greater than in any other country in the world and it’s where most of our potential development partnerships are located. CVD is the #1 cause of chronic disease death globally at 37% and causes 50% of all non-communicable disease related deaths in India. Roughly 5% of Indians carry a gene that predisposes them to heart disease. And, it is estimated that from 2005-2015 India will lose approximately 1% of its annual Gross Domestic product (GDP.) That may seem negligible, but equates to almost USD$237 billion!

Did you know? – The largest slum populations globally are located in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, so developing an understanding of how our idea will work in different urban slums with different and specific needs is critical to our success. By conducting a large pilot test in Sao Paulo, we’ll get first-hand knowledge of how our program can work in an urban slum and understand what it will take to scale our idea.

We’ve already reserved our plane tickets and hotel package! What we are asking you for is help in covering the costs associated with traveling to Brazil and conducting the large-scale pilot in Sao Paulo. This will include expenses such as: hiring a guide that can help us gain trustworthy access to the slum community, hiring a translator fluent in Portuguese, hiring a reliable car and driver to safely transport us to and from the favela, hiring a trained dance instructor to perform the dance lessons, renting or purchasing equipment necessary to conduct the lesson and health checks (such as blood pressure cuff & monitor)…and the list goes on!

Your generous contributions will help us gain key learnings that will inform our ultimate presentation to the regional competition judges and to our overall program plan! YOU can help us make this social enterprise idea even stronger so that we can effectively address the increasing problem of cardiovascular disease among the already at-risk millions of people living in urban slums around the world.

Thank you so much for your support and we will keep you posted with our progress!

The One Million Community Health Workers Campaign (an Earth Institute initiative)is looking for immediate hire for three positions:

1 technical/research intern

1 communications intern

1 communication position (full time)

Job description has not been finalized; email Hannah Sarah Dini a short statement of interest if you’d like to learn more.
Please reach out to Hannah Sarah Dini (hsdini@ei.columbia.edu) directly if you have questions or would like to apply. Details about the internships:

The One Million Community Health Workers Campaign supports African governments that are dedicated to the deployment of community health workers (CHWs) who can provide basic curative and preventative healthservices to their communities. Launched in January 2013, the Campaign promotes the expansion and upgrades of national CHW systems, using lessons learned from government and civil society activities to guide national policy. The objective is to bolster the health system infrastructures that support CHW recruitment, training and deployment ahead of 2015 – the end date of the Millennium Development goals.

The spring interns will be responsible for supporting the activities of the Campaign’s secretariat, based at the Earth Institute of Columbia University. Two (2) positions are available: one intern will focus on technical content, and the other on communications and advocacy. The interns will interact with various members of the Campaign, depending upon the nature of the interns’ projects. Activities may include writing policy documents, summarizing policy briefs, and conducting research on effectiveness of certain community-basedhealth interventions as well as other public health topics of interest.

Skills/Experience Required:

Preference will be given to candidates who have an understanding of public health and healthsystems in general.

Exceptional writing, drafting, and oral communication skills.

Ability to work in a fast paced environment with changing priorities and to manage multiple projects and assignments simultaneously.

Ability to work independently as well as part of a team.

Experience supporting the administrative and research needs of individuals working in non-profits and/or academia, preferably with a focus on international development, is also highly desired.

Logistics:
The positions require 5-15 hours/week commitment, and will be remunerated at the standard rate for Columbia University interns. Start date: ASAP. Applicants should submit a cover letter and resume to: hsdini@ei.columbia.edu.